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Barbara Gordon-Grayson
1984 - 1999 I'm Barbara Gordon. Most people call me Babs. I'm the daughter of two awesome cops: James 'Jim' Gordon and Sarah Essen-Gordon. I also have a little brother, Jimmy, which we do not need to say much about and a cousin-turned-surrogate sister, Carrie Kelley. At night, after my brother and I were sent to bed, I would postpone sleep and instead listen through the thin walls of our home as my parents talked about the horrors they had witnessed that day on the job. I feel comfortable enough to say I was equally horrified and intrigued. At a young age, I spent a lot of my time on computers and discovered I had a knack for not just their use, but deciphering their code. By the time I was ten, I made myself into a self-trained hacker and would often become involved in a variety of causes, becoming a hacktivist before the word had ever been coined. Of course, I was what we called a 'White Hat', a good guy. As a teenager, I stowed away in the backseat of dad's squad car hoping to sneak into the GCPD mainframe to hack their database (again, I was a good guy- I had good intentions, I promise) but instead I found my dad lied to my mom. He didn't go to the precinct that night, he didn't even get a call to a crime scene. Nope, dad went to a secret meeting with an urban legend. I kept quiet and the next week, Sal Maroni and Carmine Falcone were both arrested by my father on charges that actually stuck. My father was promoted from Desk Sergeant to Lieutenant of the Vigilante Task Force. Within a month, the Gotham Gazette had caught a picture of the 'Bat-Man' and just like that, Gotham was as obsessed with vigilante justice as I was. I talked my dad into letting me enroll in self-defense classes. After studying Internet videos of the Batman, I realized I'd need more than just karate lessons and a few hours at the gym and so I lied about joining a few extracurricular activities in order to enroll in three other defense courses (Aikido, Stick-Fighting, Judo) in addition to Boxing at the Wildcat Gym. After news had broken that Batman was working with a teenage boy, I decided that it was time for a girl to show them how it's done. So, I traded my black belt in for a utility belt... 1999 - 2000 Batgirl began with a whimper, I'm sad to admit. I had the mask, the homemade costume (complete with cape and utility belt), and the attitude. But, it still took me weeks of rooftop patrols and back-alley stakeouts before I got a chance to prevent my first mugging... and I failed. I tripped on my way down a fire escape, but I didn't give up. I did a sketch of the culprits and I made sure to commit their faces to memory. Later that month, I stopped a carjacking and recognized the tattoo on that guy's neck. Borrowing my dad's GCPD login credentials, I was able to gather that the tattoo belonged to the Badger Boulevard Ballers, a lower west side gang. So, armed with this information and my unique brand of moxie, I paid the Ballers a visit. I took a few lumps and maybe broke a rib or two, but I found that first victim's wallet and returned it. It was a lot to go through for thirteen bucks and an expired gym membership card, but I was not going to let Batgirl start out as a joke. I believed in this... and it paid off. My take down with the Ballers caught the attention of a certain duo who started investigating me. I am a bit ashamed to say it took them three hours to figure out who I was. They paid me a visit in the middle of my patrol the next night. I still remember the words of warning Batman gave me. "Stay out of this, Barbara," he told me, I'm sure in an effort to scare me... but Bruce didn't know me then as much as he thought he did. As my wounds mended, I set my sights on a new gang in town, calling themselves the Red Hoods. While I was in the middle of my research during my lunch hour in the school library's computer lab, a boy that didn't go to my school slipped me a note and had me follow him to a chauffeured car in the parking lot where I met billionaire Bruce Wayne who told me that he was aware of my research and realized that I wasn't going to quit. So he made me a deal. He'd give me a computer with unlimited access to finish my research, an armored costume, actual crimefighting training, and all I had to do was let my injuries heal completely before he would let me go out on patrol again. Longest five weeks of my life.